It was a sweltering afternoon in August when I first came to Soothr, and I was wishing I’d visited several months earlier. Thai noodle soups are the restaurant’s specialty, and while summers in New York City are not kind to anybody, they are especially harsh if you happen to love noodle soups. When the city seethes under temperatures in the 90s, thinking about a scalding bowl of soup sets off an internal battle of anticipation and fear that can make you feel like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” after his reconditioning.
Of course, summers in Thailand are no picnic, either. The country has an ingeniously simple solution to the hot-soup-in-August problem: ladling the broth into a separate bowl, where it can cool while you eat everything else. This style is called, oxymoronically, dry noodle soup. It figures heavily on the menu at Soothr, taking the dread out of my first bowl of…
